Bringing a timely synthesis to the field, The Handbook of Law and Society presents a comprehensive overview of key research findings, theoretical developments, and methodological controversies in the field of law and society.

• Provides illuminating insights into societal issues that pose ongoing real-world legal problems
• Offers accessible, succinct overviews with in-depth coverage of each topic, including its evolution, current state, and directions for future research
• Addresses a wide range of emergent topics in law and society and revisits perennial questions about law in a global world including the widening gap between codified laws and “law in action”, problems in the implementation of legal decisions, law’s constitutive role in shaping society, the importance of law in everyday life, ways legal institutions both embrace and resist change, the impact of new media and technologies on law, intersections of law and identity, law’s relationship to social consensus and conflict, and many more
• Features contributions from 38 international expert scholars working in diverse fields at the intersections of legal studies and social sciences
• Unique in its contributions to this rapidly expanding and important new multi-disciplinary field of study

Patricia Ewick is Professor of Sociology at Clark University. She is the co-author of The Common Place of Law (1998) and Social Science, Social Policy and Law (1999). She is also former co-editor of Studies in Law, Politics and Society and former Associate Editor of the Law & Society Review.

Austin Sarat is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College and Hugo L. Black Visiting Senior Scholar at the University of Alabama School of Law. He is the author or editor of more than 90 books, including Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Death Penalty (2014); When the State Kills: Capital Punishment in Law, Politics, and Culture (2002); The Blackwell Companion to Law and Society (Wiley Blackwell, 2004); and Mercy on Trial: What It Means to Stop an Execution (2007).

Notes on Contributors viii

On the Emerging Maturity of Law and Society: An Introduction  xiii
Patricia Ewick and Austin Sarat

Part I Setting the Stage 1

1 What is Law and Society? Definitional Disputes 3
Susan M. Sterett

2 Charting the “Classics” in Law and Society: The Development of the Field over the Past Half]Century 18
Calvin Morrill and Kelsey Mayo

Part II Approaches to the Study of Law as a Social Phenomenon 37

3 Mapping a Cultural Studies of Law 39
Naomi Mezey

4 Approaches to the Study of Law as a Social Phenomenon: Legal History 56
Kunal M. Parker

5 Legal Ethnographies and Ethnographic Law 71
Susan Bibler Coutin and Veronique Fortin

6 Just a Thought? Instantiations and Constructions of Procedural Justice 85
Mary R. Rose

Part III Institutional Processes and Actors 103

7 Lawyers and the Legal Profession 105
Ronit Dinovitzer and Bryant Garth

8 Courts and Judges: The Legitimacy Imperative and the Importance of Appearances 118
Keith J. Bybee and Angela G. Narasimhan

9 Jurors and Juries 134
Nancy S. Marder

10 Upside Down and Inside Out: Regulators and Regulatory Processes in Contemporary Perspective 150
Bronwen Morgan

11 Using Public Law to Shape Private Organizations 168
Cary Coglianese and Jennifer Nash

12 Police and Policing 183
Jennifer D. Wood

Part IV Domains of Legal Policy 197

13 Domains of Policy: Law and Society Research on the Family 199
Annie Bunting

14 Domains of Policy: Law and Society Perspectives on Antidiscrimination Law 212
Donna E. Young

15 Domains of Policy: Law and Society Perspectives on Punishment and Social Control 228
Keramet Reiter

16 Welfare Law 244
Vicki Lens

17 Immigration Law and Immigrants’ Lived Experiences 258
Leisy J. Abrego

18 The Return of Religion: The Rise, Decline, and Possible Resurrection of Legal Secularism 274
Nomi Maya Stolzenberg

19 Human Rights 291
Heinz Klug

20 More]than]Human Legalities: Advocating an “Animal Turn” in Law and Society 307
Irus Braverman

21 Law and Disability 322
Katharina Heyer

Part V How Does Law Matter? 337

22 The Constitution of Identity: Law and Race 339
Osagie K. Obasogie

23 The Constitution of Identity: New Modalities of Nationality, Citizenship, Belonging and Being 351
Eve Darian]Smith

24 The Past, Present, and Future of Rights Scholarship 367
Jeffrey R. Dudas, Jonathan Goldberg]Hiller and Michael W. McCann

25 Law and Social Movements: Old Debates and New Directions 382
Sandra R. Levitsky

26 The Rule of Law and Economic Development: Global Scripts, Vernacular Translations 399
Ritu Birla

27 Law and Colonialism: Legacies and Lineages 417
Renisa Mawani

28 Law and Globalism: Law without the State as Law without Violence 433
Julieta Lemaitre

Index 446